Parallel II
by Solain Rhyo
Summary: Jack and Shepard come together in all the most primal of ways.


_**Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Bioware / EA.**_

**.x.**

Jack isn't sure why she misses him. She isn't sure, either, why it hurts so much to do so. For a woman such as she, tempered again and again through the cruel and underhanded cycles of Fate, heartache is something foreign and maudlin and even shameful. There has never been a man—or woman—that she's fucked that's taken hold of her like this. There's never been a man or woman that she hasn't been able to determinedly forget and cast aside when necessity called for it. And there has never, ever been anyone that created within her this this void, this ache, centered somewhere in her chest, hooked to her as though by some manner of insidious tendrils that will not ever relinquish their hold.

There has never been anyone to make her feel like this, that is, until Shepard.

At first, their coming together was that of stars colliding, an explosion of energy and chaos that was dangerous to all around them and especially to themselves. She had needed to be fucked—needed to channel all the bridled anxiety and fears and doubts she dare not expose to anyone (and hated to admit to herself) into a glorious sexual conquest. She found all that she needed in Shepard. His appetite was as fierce as her own and without question he took her up on her unspoken offer, on the unsubtle invitations in her voice when she spoke and responded in full to the shadowed lust in her eyes. And it had been a wondrous diversion, for a time, their primal, ferocious unification of the flesh. In each other they had found similarities they did not realize existed, had found appetites within themselves that had been until then only the faintest of echoes in their psyches.

She remembers the first time she cut him. They'd both found their respective releases, several times over, and it was in the latest hours of the night cycle that he'd handed her the blade as they both lay side by side on his bed, bodies covered with a fine sheen of sweat. No words had been needed; she'd read the challenge in the slow, faint, curve of his lips. So she'd swung herself up and over, straddling him, placing her free hand flat upon his chest. He'd moved then, a sinuous thrust of his hips that had her biting her lip as his flesh ground against hers that was still so sensitive. She'd set the blade against the taut skin right below his nipple and sliced, exerting the only the slightest amount of pressure needed in order to draw blood. And she'd exulted in the way he'd sucked in his breath, his body shuddering beneath the exquisite onslaught. Her arousal in that moment was unprecedented, as was his; as she cut him again, lower on the abdomen, she felt his shaft quickly harden against her thigh.

His torture became hers in short order; when his arms and chest were decorated with the thinnest lines seeping delicate crimson beads, he'd flipped her onto her back, swiftly grabbing the blade from her. And as he loomed over her, his blood a star-map in miniature upon his own skin, she'd licked her lips and swallowed hard against the knot of mingled lust and fear and need in her throat and mewled out her invitation. It was the cruelest form of pleasure, she discovered, watching as the blade seamlessly parted her flesh, hissing in agonized pleasure as he marked her thus again and again and again. She was his and he was hers, she knew it, reveled in it. This branding was her absolution. They came together then in the most overwhelming of ways, their mutual climaxes such that the air around them hummed with intensity as she moaned his name, as he growled hers. It was the final, darkly intimate link that joined them as irrevocably and impossibly as nothing else could.

Theirs was an attraction not understood by many. They are both volatile and both are more inclined to shoot first and make peace later. Their tempers are so very, very short-leashed, and they feed off each other in times of anger, needing the negative energy like most life needs air. It was the stigma of their short-lived match, this reaction, two of the same poles forever destined to repel each other. Thinking back now, she realizes that she'd always really known the way it would end—

With his withdrawal. With his dismissal. With a coldly calm pronouncement so unlike his fiery persona. So mercurial, his transition from lover to stranger, and even though she'd experienced things similar so many times, even though she had expected _this_, it still hurt. And now she hates that pain, hates it more than the bittersweet memories, hates it more than all she'd endured at the hands of Cerberus; it is a reminder that she is, despite her best efforts, still fundamentally human beneath the marred and hardened exterior she has for so long labored to construct.

She recalls frequently bits and pieces of their searing, tumultuous time together as the closest of partners. Recollects standing before a mirror after a night in his company, staring with a strange kind of pride and possession at the marks that adorned her naked flesh: the trio of fresh cuts adorning each breast as beautiful parallel lines, the small dark bruises lining her neck and collarbone from bites made in the throes of passion. There were other bruises, other marks, each a testament to the desire he once held for her and the way he'd claimed her as no other man had ever been able to. At the time she'd worn them as she would any other war wound—gained in trial by fire, evidence of the sweetly insidious tortures she'd suffered at his hands. At the time she'd loved what they meant, loved what they signified and loved what they promised was to come.

It was shortly after she'd realized that she loved him, too.

Star-crossed is not, she thinks now, an apt enough phrase to describe what she and Shepard had been. _ Doomed_ was a suitable word. _Destined for destruction_ also had an accurate ring to it. In succumbing to the sins Shepard had beckoned her with, she'd been the architect of her own emotional demise and it was that fact and no other that now causes this ever-present amalgam of self-loathing and rage and despair to swirl about her always. She had foreseen in Shepard sex of indescribable proportions and a twisted kind of camaraderie; what she had not seen, what she had not anticipated was that, after all this time and all her exposure to every kind of villain in the galaxy, she would make the most fatal lapse in judgement and actually come to care for him. That she would come to love him for the fucked up parts of his soul that so closely mirrored her own, that she would think for even one pathetic heartbeat that maybe he could love her too—

She hates herself now for this weakness. She hates him, too, for being as human as she is, for being the one to escape this catastrophe unscathed. It was he who had left her, he that had uprooted and left her standing as she had done to so many others. The irony has not escaped her. Nor has the regret, or the recrimination, or the violent coils of anger that she can only control tenuously, at best. But there is an edge to this sad little melodrama that she embraces fully and with utter vindication. It's that which has fueled her drive to reach this point, that has her disembarking from a transport that has just reached Omega, that has her striding down a corridor flooded with so many others with a deadly determination. It is this militant sense of vengeance that has her hot on the trail of the one that has hurt her so, that has led her to track him here. The galaxy has gone to shit—the Reapers have arrived full force and are systematically eradicating any and all life. It is universal knowledge that the end is near.

And she's come to aid Shepard in meeting his.

**.x.**


End file.
